The Spine of the World

by Philip Athans

  “Hee hee hee,” the old man giggled. “Seems your little girlie’s got a caller,” he snickered.

  “And an old one at that,” remarked another, also more than willing to join in the play at Jaka’s expense.

  “But I’m thinking I might give the girl a try meself,” the dirty old duffer at Jaka’s side remarked. That drew a frown from Jaka, and so the old man only laughed all the harder at finally evoking some response from the boy.

  Jaka turned his head slowly around, surveying the field and the workers, the few houses scattered on the mountainside, Castle Auck far in the distance, and the dark, cold waters beyond that. Those waters had brought him, his mother, and his uncle to this forlorn place only four years before. Jaka didn’t know why they had come to Auckney—he had been quite content with his life in Luskan—except that it had something to do with his father, who used to beat his mother mercilessly. He suspected that they were running, either from the man or from the executioner. It seemed to be a typical tactic for the Sculi family, for they had done the same thing when Jaka was a toddler, fleeing from their ancestral home in the Blade Kingdoms all the way to Luskan. Certainly his father, a vicious man whom Jaka hardly knew, would search them out and kill his mother and her brother for running away. Or perhaps Jaka’s father was already dead, left in his own blood by Rempini, Jaka’s uncle.

  Either way, it didn’t matter to Jaka. All that he knew was that he was in this place, a dreadful, windy, cold, and barren fiefdom. Until recently, the only good thing about it all, in his view, was that the perpetual melancholy of the place enhanced his poetic nature. Even though he fancied himself quite the romantic hero, Jaka had passed his seventeenth birthday now, and had many times considered tagging along with one of the few merchants who happened through, going out into the wide world, back to Luskan perhaps, or even better, all the way to mighty Waterdeep. He planned to make his fortune there someday, somehow, and perhaps get all the way back to the Blade Kingdoms.

  But those plans had been put on hold, for yet another positive aspect of Auckney had revealed itself to the young man. Jaka could not deny the attraction he felt to a certain young Ganderlay girl.

  Of course, he couldn’t let her or anyone else know that, not until he was certain that she would give herself over to him fully.

  Hurrying past the coach, Dohni Ganderlay recognized the driver, a gray-bearded gnome he knew as Liam Woodgate. Liam smiled and nodded at him, which relaxed Dohni considerably, though he still kept his swift pace through the door. At his small kitchen table sat the steward of Castle Auck. Across from him was Dohni’s ill wife, Biaste, whose beaming expression the peat farmer hadn’t seen in a long, long time.

  “Master Ganderlay,” Temigast said politely. “I am Temigast, steward of Castle Auck, emissary of Lord Feringal.”

  “I know that,” Dohni said warily. Never taking his eyes from the old man, Dohni Ganderlay made his way around the table, avoiding one of the two remaining chairs to stand behind his wife, dropping his hands on her shoulders.

  “I was just explaining to your wife that my lord, and yours, requests the presence of your eldest daughter at the castle for dinner this evening,” the steward said.

  The startling news hit Dohni Ganderlay as solidly as any club ever could, but he held his balance and his expression, letting it sink in. He looked behind the words into Temigast’s old, gray eyes.

  “Of course, I have suitable clothing for Miss Meralda in the coach, should you agree,” Temigast finished with a comforting smile.

  Proud Dohni Ganderlay saw behind that smiling facade, behind the polite and respectful tone. He saw the condescension there and recognized the confidence within Temigast. Of course they could not refuse, Temigast believed, for they were but dirty peasants. The lord of Auckney had come a’calling, and the Ganderlays would welcome that call eagerly, hungrily.

  “Where is Meralda?” the man asked his wife.

  “She and Tori’ve gone to trading,” the woman explained. Dohni couldn’t ignore the weak trembling in her voice. “To get a few eggs for supper.”

  “Meralda can eat at a banquet this night, and perhaps for many nights,” Temigast remarked.

  Dohni saw it so clearly again, the wretched condescension that reminded him of his lot in life, of the fate of his children, all his friends, and their children as well.

  “Then she will come?” Temigast prompted after a long and uncomfortable silence.

  “That’ll be Meralda’s to choose,” Dohni Ganderlay replied more sharply than he had intended.

  “Ah,” said the steward, nodding and smiling, always smiling. He rose from his chair and motioned for Biaste to remain seated. “Of course, of course, but do come and retrieve the gown, Master Ganderlay. Should you decide to send the young lady, it will be better and easier if she had it here.”

  “And if she doesn’t want to go?”

  Temigast arched a brow, suggesting he thought the notion that she might refuse absurd. “Then I will have my coachman return tomorrow to retrieve the gown, of course,” he said.

  Dohni looked down at his ill wife, at the plaintive expression on her too-delicate features.

  “Master Ganderlay?” Temigast asked, motioning for the door. Dohni patted Biaste on the shoulders and walked beside the steward out to the coach. The gnome driver was waiting for them, gown in hand, and his arms uplifted to keep the delicate fabric from dragging in the dusty road.

  “You would do well to urge your daughter to attend,” Temigast advised, handing over the gown, which only made Dohni Ganderlay steel his features all the more.

  “Your wife is sick,” Temigast reasoned. “No doubt a meager existence in a drafty house will not do her well with the cold winter approaching.”

  “You speak as if we’ve a choice in the matter,” Dohni replied.

  “Lord Feringal is a man of great means,” Temigast explained. “He has easy access to amazing herbs, warm beds, and powerful clerics. It would be a pity for your wife to suffer needlessly.” The steward patted the gown. “We shall dine just after sundown,” he explained. “I will have the coach pass by your home at dusk.” With that, Temigast stepped into the coach and closed the door. The driver wasted no time in putting whip to horses to speed them away.

  Dohni Ganderlay stood for a long while in the cloud of dust left by the departing coach, gown in hand, staring at the empty air before him. He wanted to scream out that if Lord Feringal was such a connected and beneficent lord, then he should willingly use his means for the welfare of his flock. People like Biaste Ganderlay should be able to get the aid they needed without selling their daughters. What Temigast had just offered him was akin to selling his daughter for the benefit of the family. Selling his daughter!

  And yet, for all his pride, Dohni Ganderlay could not deny the opportunity that lay before him.

  “It was the lord’s coach,” Jaka Sculi insisted to Meralda when he intercepted her on her way home later that same day. “At your own front door,” he added with his exotic accent, a dialect thick with sighs and dramatic huffs.

  Tori Ganderlay giggled. Meralda punched her in the shoulder and motioned for her to be on her way. “But I want to know,” she whined.

  “You’ll be knowing the taste of dirt,” Meralda promised her. She started for her sister but stopped abruptly and composed herself, remembering her audience. Meralda turned back to Jaka after painting a sweet smile on her face, still managing to glare at Tori out of the corner of her eye.

  Tori started skipping down the road. “But I wanted to see you kiss him,” she squealed happily as she ran on.

  “Are you sure about the coach?” Meralda asked Jaka, trying very hard to leave Tori’s embarrassing remarks behind.

  The young man merely sighed with dramatic exasperation.

  “But what business has Lord Feringal with my folks?” the young woman asked.

  Jaka hung his head to the side, hands in pockets, and shrugged.

  “Well, I should be going, then,” Me
ralda said, and she took a step, but Jaka shifted to block her way. “What’re you about?”

  Jaka looked at her with those light blue eyes, running a hand through his mop of curly hair, his face tilted up at her.

  Meralda felt as if she would choke for the lump that welled in her throat, or that her heart would beat so forcefully that it would pound right out of her chest.

  “What’re you about?” she asked again, much more quietly and without any real conviction.

  Jaka moved toward her. She remembered her own advice to Tori, about how one had to make a boy beg. She reminded herself that she should not be doing this, not yet. She told herself that pointedly, and yet she was not retreating at all. He came closer, and as she felt the heat of his breath she, too, moved forward. Jaka just let his lips brush hers, then backed away, appearing suddenly shy.

  “What?” Meralda asked again, this time with obvious eagerness.

  Jaka sighed, and the woman came forward again, moving to kiss him, her whole body trembling, telling, begging him to kiss her back. He did, long and soft, then he moved away.

  “I’ll be waiting for you after supper,” he said, and he turned with a shrug and started slowly away.

  Meralda could hardly catch her breath, for that kiss had been everything she had dreamed it would be and more. She felt warm in her belly and weak in her knees and tingly all over. Never mind that Jaka, with one simple hesitation, had done to her exactly what she had told Tori a woman must do to a man. Meralda couldn’t even think of that at the time, too entranced was she by the reality of what had just happened and by the promise of what might happen next.

  She took the same path down the road Tori had taken, and her skipping was no less full of the girlish joy, as if Jaka’s kiss had freed her of the bonds of temperance and dignity that came with being a woman.

  Meralda entered her house all smiles. Her eyes widened when she saw her sick mother standing by the table, as happy as she had seen the woman in tendays. Biaste held a beautiful gown, rich emerald green with glittering gems sewn into its seams.

  “Oh, but you’ll be the prettiest Auckney’s ever seen when you put this on,” Biaste Ganderlay said, and beside her, Tori exploded in giggles.

  Meralda stared at the gown wide-eyed, then turned to regard her father who was standing at the side of the room, smiling as well. Meralda recognized that his expression was somewhat more strained than Biaste’s.

  “But Ma, we’ve not the coin,” Meralda reasoned, though she was truly enchanted by the gown. She moved up to stroke the soft material, thinking how much Jaka would love to see her in it.

  “A gift, and nothing to buy,” Biaste explained, and Tori giggled all the more.

  Meralda’s expression turned to one of curiosity, and she looked to her father again for some explanation, but, surprisingly, he turned away.

  “What’s it about, Ma?” the young woman asked.

  “You’ve a suitor, my girl,” Biaste said happily, pulling the gown out so that she could hug her daughter. “Oh, but you’ve got a lord hisself wanting to court you!”

  Always considerate of her mother’s feelings, especially now that the woman was ill, Meralda was glad that Biaste’s head was on Meralda’s shoulder, so her mother couldn’t see the stunned and unhappy expression that crossed her daughter’s face. Tori did see it, but the girl only looked up at Meralda and pursed her lips repeatedly in a mockery of a kiss. Meralda looked to her father, who now faced her but only nodded solemnly.

  Biaste pulled her back to arms’ length. “Oh, my little girl,” she said. “When did you get so beautiful? To think that you’ve caught the heart of Lord Feringal.”

  Lord Feringal. Meralda could hardly catch her breath, and not for any joy. She hardly knew the lord of Castle Auck, though she had seen him on many occasions from afar, usually picking his fingernails and looking bored at the celebratory gatherings held in the town square.

  “He’s sweet on you, girl,” Biaste went on, “and in it thick, by the words of his steward.”

  Meralda managed a smile for her mother’s sake.

  “They’ll be coming for you soon,” Biaste explained. “So be quick to get a bath. Then,” she added, pausing to bring one hand up to her mouth, “then we’ll put you in this gown, and oh, how all the men who see you will fall before your feet.”

  Meralda moved methodically, taking the gown and turning for her room with Tori on her heels. It all seemed a dream to the young woman, and not a pleasant one. Her father walked past her to her mother. She heard them strike up a conversation, though the words seemed all garbled to her, and the only thing she truly heard was Biaste’s exclamation, “A lord for my girl!”

  Auckney was not a large place, and though its houses weren’t cluttered together, the folk were certainly within shouting distance of each other. It didn’t take long for word of the arrangement between Lord Feringal and Meralda Ganderlay to spread.

  Jaka Sculi learned the truth about the visit of Lord Feringal’s steward before he finished eating that same evening, before the sun touched the western horizon.

  “To think one of his station will dip low enough to touch the likes of a peasant,” Jaka’s ever-pessimistic mother remarked, her voice still thick with the heavy peasant accent of their long-lost homeland in the Blade Kingdoms. “Ah, to the ruin of all the world!”

  “Evil tiding,” Jaka’s uncle agreed, a grizzled old man who appeared to have seen too much of the world.

  Jaka, too, thought this a terrible turn of events, but for a very different reason—at least he thought his anger had come from a different source, for he wasn’t certain of the reason his mother and uncle were so upset by the news, and his expression clearly revealed that confusion.

  “We’ve each our station,” his uncle explained. “Clear lines, and not ones to be crossed.”

  “Lord Feringal brings dishonor to his family,” said his mother.

  “Meralda is a wonderful woman,” Jaka argued before he could catch and hold the words secret.

  “She’s a peasant, as we all be,” his mother was quick to explain. “We’ve our place, and Lord Feringal’s got his. Oh, them folk will rejoice at the news, do not doubt, thinking to draw some of their own hope at Meralda’s good fortunes, but they’re not knowing the truth of it.”

  “What truth?”

  “He’ll use her to no good ends,” foretold his mother. “He’ll make himself the fool and the girl a tramp.”

  “And in the end, she’ll be broken or dead, and Lord Feringal will have lost all favor with his peers,” added his uncle. “Evil tiding.”

  “Why do you believe that she will succumb?” the young man asked, working hard to keep the desperation out of his tone.

  His mother and uncle merely laughed at that question. Jaka understood their meaning all too clearly. Feringal was the lord of Auckney. How could Meralda refuse him?

  It was more than poor, sensitive Jaka could take. He banged the table hard with his fist and slid his chair back. Rising fast to his feet, he matched the surprised stares of his mother and uncle with a glower of utter rage. With that Jaka turned on his heel and rushed out, slamming the door behind him.

  Before he knew it he was running, his thoughts whirling. Jaka soon came to high ground, a small tumble of rocks just above the muddy field he had been working earlier that same day, a place affording him a splendid view of the sunset, as well as Meralda’s house. In the distant southwest he saw the castle, and he pictured the magnificent coach making its deliberate way up the road to it with Meralda inside.

  Jaka felt as if a heavy weight were pressing on his chest, as if all the limitations of his miserable existence had suddenly become tangible walls, closing, closing. For the last few years Jaka had gone to great lengths to acquire just the correct persona, the correct pose, and the correct attitude, to turn the heart of any young lady. Now here came this foolish nobleman, this prettily painted and perfumed fop with no claim to reputation other than the station to which he had bee
n born, to take all that Jaka had cultivated right out from under him.

  Jaka, of course, didn’t see things with quite that measure of clarity. To him it seemed a plain enough truth, a grave injustice played against him simply because of the station, or lack thereof, of his birth. Because these pitiful peasants of Auckney didn’t know the truth of him, the greatness that lay within him hidden by the dirt of farm fields and peat bogs.

  The distraught young man ran his hands through his brown locks and heaved a great sigh.

  “You best get it all cleaned, because you’re not knowing what Lord Feringal will be seeing,” Tori teased, and she ran a rough cloth across Meralda’s back as her sister sat like a cat curled up in the steaming hot bath.

  Meralda turned at the words and splashed water in Tori’s face. The younger girl’s giggles halted abruptly when she noted the grim expression on Meralda’s face.

  “I’m knowing what Lord Feringal will be seeing, all right,” Meralda assured her sister. “If he’s wanting his dress back, he’ll have to be coming back to the house to get it.”

  “You’d refuse him?”

  “I won’t even kiss him,” Meralda insisted, and she lifted a dripping fist into the air. “If he tries to kiss me, I’ll—”

  “You’ll play the part of a lady,” came the voice of her father. Both girls looked to the curtain to see the man enter the room. “Leave,” he instructed Tori. The girl knew that tone well enough to obey without question.

  Dohni Ganderlay stayed at the door a moment longer to make sure that too-curious Tori had, indeed, scooted far away, then he moved to the side of the tub and handed Meralda a soft cloth to dry herself. They lived in a small house where modesty was pointless, so Meralda was not the least bit embarrassed as she stepped from her bath, though she draped the cloth around her before she sat on a nearby stool.

  “You’re not happy about the turn of events,” Dohni observed.

  Meralda’s lips grew thin, and she leaned over to splash a nervous hand in the cold bath water.